ci: subscribe the four gate workflows to merge_group, and move ci/lint path filtering into the jobs (#3523 steps 1-2)

[os-project-manager]

Fixes #3523

Steps 1 and 2 of the card. Step 3 — writing context names into the branch-protection and merge-queue required sets — is a repository-settings change and is deliberately not in this PR.

The premise, re-measured before implementing

Both load-bearing claims still held on origin/main at 0cf8f0f:

Claim	Re-measurement
Zero merge_group subscriptions repo-wide	git grep merge_group origin/main → no match anywhere in the tree, .github/ included. Actions API, event=merge_group, repo-wide: {"total_count": 0}.
paths-ignore hides these contexts from a docs-only PR	PR #3714 (docs-only, ROADMAP.md) carries exactly 6 check runs: Close issues referenced in other repositories, Vercel Preview Comments, dependabot, label, Control Byte Scan, Internal Docs Link Check. Not one of Lint / Type Check / Test (shard N/4) / Build & E2E / Changeset Fixed Group Check.

The cross-repo asymmetry the card describes also still holds: objectstack's queue has 3552 merge_group runs; objectui's had 0.

Commit 1 — step 1: subscribe the trigger

merge_group: types: [checks_requested] on ci.yml, lint.yml, control-bytes.yml, docs-links.yml — the four the card names, and no others. Pure addition: nothing about pull-request or push behaviour changes.

Two ci.yml jobs additionally had to be told a third event exists. Both are no-ops for pull_request and push:

• test moved from if: github.event_name == 'pull_request' to != 'push'. Left alone, the queue build — the last validation before main — would have been the only one skipping every shard.
• docs's should_run treated "not push" as "is a pull request" and diffed github.event.pull_request.*, which is null on a queue build: an empty revision range, i.e. the site build silently skipped.

Commit 2 — step 2: make the contexts report on every PR

on.pull_request.paths-ignore skips the whole workflow when every changed file matches, and GitHub has no per-job path filter. A check that is never created does not fail a required-status-check rule — it leaves the PR pending, and inside the queue it fails on the ruleset's 60-minute status-check timeout. That is why the queue's required set was empty in the first place, and it is the half of the P0 that a trigger alone does not fix.

The filter is not deleted, it moves. type-check, test, e2e (ci.yml) and lint (lint.yml) each open with a Decide whether this change needs a full run step, and every step after it carries if: steps.relevant.outputs.should_run == 'true'. The job always runs and always reports; the paths decide only whether it does any work. That is the shape ci.yml's docs job has used since #3450 — no new mechanism — and the exclusion lists are byte-for-byte the paths-ignore they replace, so which PRs pay for a full run is exactly as before.

The three PM assumptions, checked

1. Is types: [checks_requested] the right spelling? Both spellings are legal and equivalent today: checks_requested is the only activity type GitHub defines for merge_group, and objectstack's bare merge_group: demonstrably produces queue builds (3552 of them). I chose the explicit form so that a second activity type added later cannot silently start queue builds these workflows were never written for. The comment in ci.yml records that objectstack spells it the other way and why the two are the same today.

2. Does Build Docs's should_run pattern transfer? Yes, with one correction that matters. It needs fetch-depth: 0 (added to test, e2e, lint; type-check already had it), and its push/else split does not survive contact with merge_group — see commit 1. It also fails closed: 2>/dev/null || echo "" turns an unresolvable diff into "nothing relevant changed". The new gates fail open instead (objectstack#4928's filter contract). Measured both ways against a fixture repository: as shipped, an unreachable base sha yields should_run=true; rewritten with the docs job's spelling, the same input yields should_run=false — a silent full skip that reports green. The pre-existing docs gate is reported separately rather than changed here.

3. Can concurrency collide between a queue build and a PR build? No, and this was measured rather than reasoned. On merge_group the github.event.pull_request half of the group expression is null, so the group falls back to github.ref, which on a queue build is the queue's own generation — objectstack's queue runs report head_branch as gh-readonly-queue/main/pr-6594-251e888ac9ace8226f3a8450951e5b40a0a84c2c. That can equal neither a PR group (a bare number, or refs/pull/N/merge in lint.yml's case) nor a push group (refs/heads/main). No change was needed.

What I could verify, and what I could not

Could not: that a check run actually appears on a gh-readonly-queue/** generation in this repository. That requires enqueueing a PR, which means merging it, and I may not merge. This PR's own CI runs on pull_request, never on merge_group, so the trigger's first real exercise is the first PR that enters the queue after this lands. Please treat that as the acceptance test for step 1 — and note the card's warning still applies: if Lint / Type Check are currently in the required set, any PR entering the queue will hang for 60 minutes and fail, until this lands.

Could: the equivalent construct producing queue check runs on objectstack, with the gh-readonly-queue/** head branch quoted above; that the YAML parses and that exactly these four workflows declare merge_group; and the entire path-decision logic, executed rather than eyeballed. The run: script was extracted from the shipped YAML, its ${{ }} expressions substituted the way GitHub substitutes them, and run against a fixture repository — 20 cases, all passing:

Case	ci.yml	lint.yml
docs-only (content/**, *.md)	skip	skip
root markdown only	skip	skip
changeset-only	skip	skip
apps/site/** only	skip	run (not on lint's list — the pre-existing asymmetry, preserved)
code (packages/**)	run	run
docs + code	run	run
workflows + scripts/__tests__ (this PR)	run	run
unresolvable base sha	run (fail-open)	run (fail-open)
merge_group	run	run
push	run	run

Reverse verification

scripts/__tests__/merge-queue-reporting.test.ts was run against the pre-change workflows (git checkout origin/main -- .github/workflows/). Predicted direction: red, one failure per regression. Observed: 9 of 10 assertions fail, each naming its own — no merge_group subscription, test restricted to pull_request, paths-ignore on both pull_request triggers, no in-job exclusion list, no id: relevant gate, no fail-open guard. The one that stays green is the honesty check on the workflow-name list, which is independent of the fix by design.

Two deliberate narrowings — arguable, so stated plainly

1. paths-ignore stays on the push trigger. Branch protection and the merge queue judge pull requests and queue builds, never pushes to main, so the push lane gains nothing from losing it and would cost a full CI run on every docs merge. It also leaves the ignore list one authored home, which the new pin test then holds the in-job copies against. If you want the push lane unfiltered too, say so and it is a two-line follow-up.
2. On merge_group, everything runs. Queue builds do not short-circuit on paths. objectstack's ci.yml states the reason for the same decision — the queue build is the last validation before main, "the one place a skipped job can never be the right answer" — and a docs-only PR whose queue build validated nothing would rebuild this card's failure mode one level down. The cost is a full CI run per docs PR at merge time only.

changeset-check is left ungated on purpose: it is a checkout and one node call, so short-circuiting it would cost more complexity than it saves. It now reports on every PR, which it previously did not.

Docs and pins

• content/docs/guide/ci-cd-pipeline.md: inventory rows, both Triggers: paragraphs, the When column for type-check / test / e2e, and the three sections whose stated rationale quoted the old paths-ignore (control-bytes.yml, docs-links.yml, changeset-guard.yml) are corrected rather than left describing the previous regime. A new Merge Queue section writes down the enforced queue, the three-step ordering and the deadlock, and the four contexts that can never be required structurally.
• scripts/__tests__/merge-queue-reporting.test.ts (new) pins both steps.
• scripts/__tests__/lint-workflow.test.ts: its TypeScript-exclusion tripwire read only the on: block. The list now also lives inside the job, so it reads both — otherwise it would have gone on passing while a **/*.ts exclusion was added to the gate.

No changeset

Nothing under packages/** changes, so no package version moves. This repository has no changeset-required gate in .github/workflows/ and no skip-changeset label (get_label returns not-found), so there is nothing to skip and no label to apply. .github/WORKFLOWS.md claims otherwise; that document is stale in five separate ways and is filed separately rather than fixed here.

Verification run

Gates enumerated from the workflow files themselves, run one by one, all green:

check-control-bytes.mjs · check-doc-links.mjs · check-changeset-fixed.mjs · check-changeset-no-major.mjs · check-lint-coverage.mjs (45/45) · check-type-check-coverage.mjs · check:spec-symbols · check:i18n-keys · check:i18n-drift · type-check:scripts · turbo run type-check (78/78) · type-check:vitest-setup · turbo run lint (45/45, 0 errors) · vitest run (1023 files, 12044 passed, 1 skipped).

Not run locally: Build & E2E (Playwright browsers) and the site build — neither can be reached by this diff, and both run on this PR.

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